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According to a report from the Center for American Progress, healthcare costs ranked among voters’ top concerns in the 2018 midterm elections. The federal government estimates that health care expenditures reached an average of $11,000 per person per year in 2017 and that costs will continue to grow more than 5.5 percent annually over the next decade. Slowing the increase in healthcare costs will be impossible without reforms to one of the largest components of health care expenditures: hospital-based care. Hospitals receive $1 out of every $3 spent on healthcare, and across the United States the projected total spend for hospital care alone in 2019 will be about $1.3 trillion.

A notable shift is that Inpatient care, which is when you actually stay overnight in the hospital for something more an observation, now makes up only slightly more than half of hospital revenue, compared with about 70 percent in 1995. Getting patients the right care at the right time in the right setting has increased the utilization of Outpatient care, or services and medical procedures or tests that can be done in a medical center without an overnight stay.

Some believe a flip from inpatient care to mostly outpatient care will continue into the future. This shift impacts all of us and will ultimately disrupt the way we, as patients, get the care that we need when we are injured or sick. Take for example joint replacement surgery which in some places is now offered in an outpatient environment.

On this episode, we are going to talk with Patrick Colletti the COO and newly named Chief Innovation Officer of Net Health, a company that creates software solutions for specialized outpatient care. Net Health serves healthcare professionals essentially all of the largest hospital chains in the US as well as private practices around the country—They support more than 3,000 facilities daily…ranging from urgent care to speech and language therapy and beyond. They are working to strengthen patient care, outcomes, and facility performance.